Our Wacky World—7/30/2014

"George Harrison Memorial Tree killed...by beetles"

He's BACK:

"Although he's not a hired security officer, George Zimmerman has been 'patrolling' outside a Volusia County gun shop after it was recently robbed, according to the store owner."

Click Orlando


Even more reassuring:

"Open Carry Advocate Wants To Fight Police Brutality By Threatening Cops With Guns"

Crooks & Liars

Meanwhile, in Georgia, they now have open carry everywhere--what could possibly go wrong?:

"On the first day of the new Georgia Safe Carry Protection Act, a misunderstanding between two armed men in a convenience store Tuesday led to a drawn firearm and a man’s arrest."

They did make it to 3:00 PM. (Valdosta Daily Times)

Meanwhile, in Florida, they keep gun owners safe from nosey doctors:

"A responsible state would pass and enforce gun safety laws to keep firearms away from children. But Florida did the opposite: The state passed a law gagging doctors from asking patients about guns, effectively preventing doctors from sharing safety tips to keep those guns out of children’s hands."

Slate

"Millennials don't want to change things, apparently – they want everyone to get along. The report observes '[m]any specifically identified LGBTQ rights as their primary reason for being liberal'; and '[o]ften, they decided they were liberals because they really didn’t like conservatives.'"

Guardian

"The defense attorney says that Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Claiborne Richardson told her that her client must either plead guilty or police would obtain another search warrant “for pictures of his erect penis.” If that is the case, this is even more serious since it sounds like this abusive warrant was used to try to pressure a plea."

Turley's Blog

'"Yes, I was using drugs that night, but I was in complete control… I cut [my penis] off because that was the root of all my problems. My solution to the problem was the realization that sex is for mortals, and I am a god. ...Those kinds of activities got me into trouble, and I came here to be a god."'

CNN


First it was the pap smear. Then the mammogram. Now it's…

"Proponents of yearly pelvic exams may say that they compel women to seek counsel from their doctors and receive vital information about their own health. (They also, of course, bolster gynecologists' job security.) But it's becoming clear that this line of thinking is self-defeating: There’s no reason for women to report to their doctors every year if they can’t even trust what they’re being told."

Slate

It sounds as if women have to put up with a lot of shit; who would have thought?:

'A well-known male facilitator of equality in the workplace seminars always begins by asking his mix-gendered groups to please make a list of what they do in a typical day to stay safe and to write until the timer goes off. He reports that – always – the women immediately begin to scribble furiously, “park under a light,” “hold my keys in my hand so I can get into the car quickly,” and so on, and that they write right up until the timer goes off. The men, on the other hand, sit there looking bewildered.'

Scholars and Rogues

Oh no, it's the old "Hitler banned guns" canard:

"Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning? Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews? What about public works — Hitler loved public works projects? Of course not. These are merely implements that can be used for good or ill, much as gun advocates like to argue about guns themselves. If guns don’t kill people, then neither does gun control cause genocide..."

Salon

Along similar lines, a fake news article fools the TeaPees once again:

"ARE YOU F——-g KIDDING ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On the 4th !!!!! He’s going to a mosque of the religion that killed almost 3,000 Americans !!!!!!!! OMG, Beyond insane & cruel !!!"

Let's see, what religion was it that supported sending thousands of Americans to their deaths in Iraq?(FTB)


Faith Healing Chicanery 101 as told by an ex-evangelical fraud (excellent article):

"There were a number of methods used to fake a demonic possession of a house. The simplest trick was having a pocket full of pebbles and occasionally throwing one at a random object. There was little chance of getting caught because there were plenty of distractions taking place, especially since everyone was kept busy praying. After we were done exorcising a room, we devised a great excuse for one of us to hang back for a while so we could clean up the pebbles."

Skeptic

♅

Our Wacky World—6/29/2014

Savor these words: "Fox news cuts Michelle Bachman's mic" Well, he did apologize. But the angry backlash from viewers has already begun. Not to be outdone, Glenn Beck has another staged moment on the air—firing his gun in anger: I guess we're supposed to follow his example somehow.

Sən of York

Jimmy Savile also liked to play with... the dead:

'D'you know what they are? They are glass eyes from dead bodies in Leeds mortuary where I work and I love working there, and I wheel the dead bodies around at night and I love that.'

Guardian

"Ohio Group Toting AR-15s Through Neighborhood Indicted On Menancing Charges"

Apparently "open carry" doesn't mean "walking through town with an AR-15 whilst jestingly pointing out the niggers." (ABC)

WND founder Farah caught with gun in bag at Dulles IA:

"I had carefully folded my clothes before placing them in my bag. I had carefully separated the clean clothes from the dirty clothes. But what I found in my bag was that someone had pulled everything out and then stuffed it all back in with little regard for my future cleaning and laundering bills."

Because that's the first thing you think of when you leave a gun in your bag at the airport. (SPLC)

Oz, the great and terrible, had his ass grilled on Capitol Hill (includes snarky John Oliver video). Here's more:

'John Oliver argued this weekend that, at this point, a more appropriate title for Oz's show would be one that dropped his medical credentials: "Check this shit out with a guy named Mehmet."'

How can you keep an audience enthralled five days a week without an endless parade of bogus crap? (plus he has a magazine,  daily radio spots, etc.) Thanks a lot, Oprah. (Vox)

Tell us how you really feel

"In the South, where researchers sent 3,200 resumes, those with a religious mention got 29 percent fewer email responses and 33 percent fewer phone calls than otherwise identical resumes with no faith ties according to the study"

Did you catch that? If you put religion on your resume you have a significantly lower chance of getting an interview... in the the most "religious" part of the US. I cannot make this shit up. (Religion News)

"A man arrested for allegedly hitting another car and attempting to steal cash and donuts from a gas station reportedly claimed the only thing he was high on at the time was the Holy Spirit. ...the man now faces a litany of charges."

KOMO

'Representative Pettalia quipped “Don’t say we don’t understand women.” The three men smugly held up copies of fashion magazine [sic] in their attempts to appeal to female voters. One has to be pretty deeply immersed in misogynistic patterns of thought to think that the secret to securing more women voters is as simple a holding up a copy of Glamour magazine in front of camera.'

Political USA

Thinking outside the box:

"CIA hatched plan to make demon toy to counter Osama bin Laden’s influence" (includes photos)

Washington Post

'"It's unbelievable," Kelley said. "Unless you were here to see it or see the pictures I've got, you would not believe how huge this thing is." A 105 howitzer artillery shell, 14 and a half inches long and 3 and a half inches across, was lying on his bedroom floor.'

KOAM

Think of the children

The scourge of genital shrinkage—will no one stop this plague? (the article is from 1999—nothing has changed):

"Those affected often take extreme measures and place clamps or string onto the precious organ or have family members hold the penis in relays until an appropriate treatment is obtained, often from native healers"

Skeptic

Are you scrupulous? You may be OCD:

"Traig didn't have a complete Jewish education; she invented her own prayers to say three times a day, until a rabbi taught her the actual words. Rather than fearing sin, which has a distinct meaning in Christianity, Traig was worried she would be punished if she didn't practice her religion correctly. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, killing the crew of seven, Traig felt partially responsible."

CNN

May god's love be with you

Our Wacky World—5/26/2014

Al Feldstein dead at 88 after warping the minds of a generation (look at how I turned out):

"Feldstein edited Mad from 1955 to 1984 when the magazine was the most widely read satirical publication in America. He was responsible for bringing on some of the "Usual Gang of Idiots" -- the Mad staffers and freelancers who filled its pages with their caricatures, puns and general wackiness."

My dad loved the famous One Finger Salute cover. I still have all of mine. (CNN)

Here you can see Fred Astaire as Alfred E. Neuman in 1959.

'The opening months of Colorado's first-in-the-nation recreational marijuana industry have seen a rise in fiery explosions and injuries as pot users try to make the drug's intoxicating oil in crude home-based laboratories. 

'Firefighters in the state have raced to at least 31 butane hash oil explosions this year, compared with 11 last year… The data represents only reported and confirmed cases, and the actual number of explosions could be higher, said Kevin Wong, an intelligence analyst for the agency. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," Wong said.'

ABC

"It used to be a young women, she gets married, she has children, and that's her job," he lamented. "They literally count my wife as unemployed! She's not unemployed, she doesn't want to be employed. I mean, she's a wife, she's a mother."

Anderson noted that Annette Funicello, a star of the Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s, had promoted birth control for a 1960s-era advertisement. At one point, he even began to sing "fornicate with me" to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club March theme song.

Crooks & Liars


Psychic faces tough crowd in Middlesbrough:

"I also don’t think that [the audience] reacted well to some of the particularly offensive scenarios Sally was recreating. One involved her re-enacting a dead man flushing narcotics down a toilet to his immediate family, whilst repeatedly saying 'flush it down'. Another was when she was talking to a teenage girl whose boyfriend had recently committed suicide by hanging himself. Sally told the girl that she can feel him hitting her leg and that he was, infact, re-enacting swinging against a door as he was committing suicide."

Myles Power

Got milk? PeTA says it's no wonder your child has autism:

"Regardless of the cause, testimonials show that many people with this disease may be able to find relief with a simple dietary change—removing milk from their diet. The Internet contains numerous heart-wrenching stories from parents of kids who had suffered the worst effects of autism for years before dairy foods were eliminated from their children’s diets."

The testimonial fallacy. (A Million Gods)


Another money-making gimmick based on the "natural" fallacy:

'The American Podiatric Medicine Association put out a policy statement back in November 2009 — which they still stand by today — saying that "research has not yet adequately shed light on the immediate and long-term effects of this practice… Barefoot running has been touted as improving strength and balance, while promoting a more natural running style… However, risks of barefoot running include a lack of protection, which may lead to injuries such as puncture wounds, and increased stress on the lower extremities."'

Vox

"The country's interior minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, singled out an icon of the Virgin Mary, in Málaga, to receive the gold medal of police merit – which is normally reserved for police who have died in terrorist attacks."

Not the Mother of God herself, an icon of the Immaculate One. (Guardian)

"France's national rail company SNCF said on Tuesday it had ordered 2,000 trains for an expanded regional network that are too wide for many station platforms"

CNBC

An excellent overview of the awesome nonsense that is EMDR:

'While strolling through a park one day, Francine Shapiro noticed that certain of her troubling thoughts suddenly lost their distressing qualities. Curious about what had happened, Shapiro regenerated the mental images and again found them no longer upsetting. Attending closely to her behavior, she realized that her eyes had been spontaneously and rapidly shifting back and forth."

'Shapiro renamed her method “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing” or EMDR, a method that one enthusiast has claimed to be “the most revolutionary, important method to emerge in psychotherapy in decades.” Others have declared EMDR to be nothing short of “amazing,” “profound,” and a “miracle”'

"Bullshit" is more like it. (Skeptic)

Dreaming O' California